PM ungrateful to regional parties: Mulayam

New Delhi, April 26 (IANS) Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav Sunday said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was “ungrateful” to regional parties by calling them an obstacle to development. The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said regional parties had provided crucial support to the Congress-led United Progress Alliance government during its last five-year tenure.

“Regional parties saved his prime ministership. He is prime minister with the support of regional parties. Lalu Prasad, the chief of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and Ram Vilas Paswan, the president of the Lok Janashakti Party, supported him but he has said all bad things about us. How more ungrateful can he be?” Mulayam Singh told Times Now news channel during his campaign trail in Uttar Pradesh.

Manmohan Singh at a meeting with the editors of newspapers and TV news channels in New Delhi April 15 said the country needed a political party with national perspective and described regionalism as well as regional parties an obstacle to growth.

The Samajwadi Party’s support to the UPA during the July 22, 2008, trust vote was crucial in saving the government after the Left parties withdrew their support to protest the India-US nuclear deal.

Mulayam Singh also urged Congress president Sonia Gandhi not to provoke him by calling the Samajwadi Party as “untrustworthy”.

“I appeal to the Congress party not to provoke me by calling us untrustworthy. She (Sonia Gandhi) does not know the history. Otherwise I will prove who has been untrustworthy from the times of (Jawaharlal) Nehru,” Mulayam Singh said.

Sonia Gandhi at an election meeting April 19 said the Samajwadi Party “befriends someone at one moment and then becomes its enemy in the next moment”.